Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/119

 Reviews. 99

several points of more serious character, about which the reviewer and the author are not in agreement. The statement on page 7, that "in most cases the song of the savage is embedded in story, legend or ceremony, apart from which it has no separate existence; while its tune, like our Austrahan example, generally consists of a single strain, rambling and indefinite, which is repeated either at the same or at a varying pitch," is demonstrably inaccurate. An enormous number of the songs of primitive people are quite independent of story, legend, or ceremony; and their melodies are far more complex and better defined than Mr. Sharp appears to imagine.

At the same time, it is exceedingly interesting for one who has worked at the music of savage peoples to find many points of resemblance between them and the present folk-singers of our own country, as studied by Mr. Sharp ; for example, we may note the wide spread of a melody from one part of the country to another, its accurate preservation through long periods of oral tradition, and the apparent property in folk-songs, as evidenced in the remark, "No ! I have heard it but do not sing it; it is so-and-so's song."

One of the most striking features of the music of primitive peoples is the unimportance they attach to the words of their songs. They repeatedly tell us, " the words don't count, it is the music that matters." Mr. Sharp, however, draws quite the opposite conclusion from his researches among English folk- singers. He notes that a peasant, on hearing a familiar tune from a stranger, will say that that is just how he would sing it, whereas actually his version turns out to be materially different. Mr. Sharp strangely explains this feature on the ground that, when a peasant hears a song, he listens only to the words, and that the attention of singers generally is chiefly concentrated on the words. No doubt, when a peasant is singing a tune among friends, he is apt to lay stress upon the words. But at other times it is the music in which he takes special interest. Indeed, the relatively greater importance of the nmsic among English peasants is demonstrated by Mr. Sharp's own observation (p. 123) that the tunes last longer than the words.